The R3 Companion Chronicles Collector’s Guide Part II

Companion-ChroniclesPrompted by a full Companion Chronicles sale, here is the second part of my guide said range. It follows on from The R3 Companion Chronicles Collector’s Guide Part IThis part covers series 5 – 8.

This is intended as a reference and is field under Home > Guides, as are all the other Red Rocket series guides.

The details

These are my opinions which are similar to many people’s though for all the ones I’ve left blank I am sure that there are many people who love them. You’ll see that (for me) the series took a while to get going with the better stories in later series.

My definitions are:

  • Classic – must have, great stories
  • Essential – you need this to follow a story arc, or for some other reason
  • Good – the best stories
  • Interesting – this has one or more features that make it worth listening to

Companion Chronicles Series 5 – 8

MAny DEaths o

Release Title Guide Notes
5.01 Guardians of the Solar System Classic The final part of the Sara Kingdom Trilogy
5.02 Echoes of Grey Essential Part of an arc of what happened next stories for Zoe
5.03 Find and Replace Interesting Jo Grant meets Iris Wildthyme
5.04 Invasion of E-Space Interesting Andrew Smith writes an E-Space tale for Romana
5.05 Town Called Fortune
5.06 Quinnis Good  A weird Marc Platt story for Susan that is a (sort of) prequel to Relative Dimensions
5.07 Peri and the Piscon Paradox  Classic If you only have one of this range, make it this Peri / Fixth / Sixth Doctor story
5.08 Perpetual Bond Essential Simon Guerrier starts the Oliver Harper trilogy
5.09 Forbidden Time
5.10 Sentinels of the New Dawn Interesting Liz Shaw meets the Sentinels (cf Lost Stories: Leviathan)
5.11 Ferril’s Folly Interesting A Romana I story sliced into the Key to Time
5.12 Cold Equations Good More Oliver Harper
6.01 Tales from the Vault Good An essential Jonathan Morris story that introduces some new characters
6.02 Rocket Men Essential John Dorney introduces the Rocket Men!
6.03 Memory Cheats
6.04 Many Deaths of Jo Grant Good In which Cavan Scott and Mark Wright kill Jo Grant. A lot!
6.05 First Wave Good The end of the Oliver Harper trilogy
6.06 Beyond the Ultimate Adventure
6.07 Anachronauts Good A moody Simon Guerrier Steven / Sara Kingdom tale
6.08 Selachian Gambit Interesting Steve Lyons has fun with Jamie and Polly
6.09 Binary
6.10 Wanderer
6.11 Jigsaw War Interesting An Eddie Robson story for Jamie you can listen to on shuffle!
6.12 Rings of Ikiria
7.01 The Time Museum Good A museum dedicated to Ian Chesterton — what’s not to like?!
7.02 The Uncertainty Principle
7.03 Project Nirvana Good Action as The Forge intersects a complex Seventh Doctor story
7.04 The Last Post Essential Caroline John’s final performance as Liz Shaw
7.05 The Return of the Rocket Men Good Matt Fitton takes up the story of the Rocket Men
7.06 The Child
7.07 The Flames of Cadiz Good A fascinating historical tale by Marc Platt
7.08 House of Cards
7.09 The Scorchies Essential In which James Goss gives us The Scorchies!
7.10 The Library of Alexandria
7.11 The Apocalypse Mirror
7.12 Council of War Interesting  An amusing story for Sergeant Benton by Simon Barnard and Paul Morris
8.01 Mastermind Good Jonathan Morris returns to The Vault!
8.02 The Alchemists Interesting  Susan and the Doctor in pre-WWII Germany
8.03 Upstairs Interesting  Mad yet evocative
8.04 Ghost in the Machine Good  Louise Jameson’s debut as director
8.05 The Beginning Good Stealing the TARDIS to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary
8.06 The Dying Light
8.07 Luna Romana Interesting  Romana III introduced by Matt Fitton
8.08 The Sleeping City
8.09 Starborn Interesting  An emotional tale from Jaq Rayner
8.10 The War to End All Wars Essential What happened next for Steven Taylor and the lead into two stories on the First Doctor Volume 1 set
8.11 The Elixir of Doom
8.12 Second Chances Essential Zoe wraps up her arc and the whole range… for now!

2 Comments Add yours

  1. Aidan says:

    A really useful overview of the range – I think The War to End All Wars ought to be marked as essential though as there are two stories in the First Doctor Companion Chronicles box set that directly follow on from it to form a trilogy. 🙂

    Like

    1. Tony Jones says:

      A good point, well made. I will update!

      Thanks Aidan!

      Like

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